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Dessert

Old English Plum Pudding

A dough of lard, butter, currants, and flour, filled with sugar, butter, and currants, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Old English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix lard, butter, and currants in a bowl.

  2. Add enough flour to dry the mixture.

  3. Add water to form a stiff dough.

Fill and wrap

  1. Take one-third of the dough and roll it out into a large round sheet.

  2. Spread 1½ cups of sugar, ⅔ cup of butter, and 1 cup of currants on the dough.

  3. Fold the dough around the filling like a dumpling.

  4. Roll out the remaining dough.

  5. Wrap the rolled dough around the dumpling.

  6. Tie the wrapped dumpling securely in a cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with sauce or moistened sugar.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Currant + flourtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lard
Fat that keeps the dough tender and short, giving a crumbly texture.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to both the dough and the filling.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once water is added, so it holds around the filling.
Currants
Provide sweetness, chewiness, and fruit flavor throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps flavor the filling.

The step that matters

Tie the wrapped dumpling securely in a cloth. If the cloth is loose or the seal fails, boiling water can seep in and make the pudding soggy and waterlogged. A firm, well-sealed wrap keeps the dough and filling intact during the long boil.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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